Texas' Great Abortion Compromise

The GOP's "compromise" position on abortion has always been clear.

(a) It will include in its categorical abortion bans exceptions for threats to the life or health of the mother; and in exchange

(b) It will threaten to jail any woman or doctor who dares try to use those exceptions.

Compromise!

The Texas Supreme Court has vacated a lower court ruling that enjoined the state from prosecuting a doctor who was set to give a woman a medically-necessary abortion. Even when the injunction was in place, state Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened to prosecute any doctor or hospital which abided by its terms and provided the procedure. And that threat remains on the table for future persons in this position (the plaintiff in this case, Kate Cox, has subsequently fled the state of Texas to receive the emergency care she needed. One presumes that the instant she returns, the bounty hunters licensed by Texas' ghoulish "pro-life" inquisitors will be hounding her).

Cox had a nonviable pregnancy -- her fetus had been diagnosed with trisomy 18, a fatal chromosomal condition -- and she had already faced severe health complications that repeatedly sent her to the hospital. Her doctors accordingly concluded that continuing the pregnancy would threaten her health and future fertility. But the state of Texas swung into action to do everything it could to ensure that she could not get the medical care she needed, insisting that Kate Cox's continued mortal peril was a legal obligation, and woe befall anyone who dared try to rescue her from it.

The Texas Supreme Court's opinion is a sterling encapsulation of the "compromise" laid out above. Over and over again, it asserts (in what would be comic if it weren't so dire) that decisions regarding whether an abortion is medically necessary are to be made by doctors, not judges. Doctors, not judges; doctors, not judges; doctors, not judges. And the court purports to confirm that doctors need not attain a pre-procedure judicial injunction before they perform a medically-necessary abortion; nor must they wait until death is "imminent" before performing the procedure.

So why are we here? Well, because after repeating "doctors, not judges" for the umpteenth time, the Court says "buuuuuut the doctor needs more than a good faith assessment, his or her judgment has to be 'objectively reasonable.'" And who decides that? It will be judges, after the fact! And what are the markers of "objectively reasonable" in this context? The court throws up its hands -- your guess is as good as mine! Except it isn't, because if you guess wrong, Ken Paxton has a prison cell waiting for you!

The way the "compromise" works out is that Republicans earnestly promise in theory all the exceptions and carveouts that make an abortion ban regime even remotely compatible with respecting women as humans, then do absolutely everything they can to make all of those provisions completely inaccessible in practice. Here the Texas Supreme Court makes three such promises: the decision regarding "medically-necessary" is one for doctors, not judges; the decision does not require advanced authorization by a judge; and the decision does not have to wait until the patient is bleeding out on the operating table. Each of these is less than "reasonable", they are the absolutely bare sub-minimum Texas women should be entitled to. And all three of them are lies.

The reason why Kate Cox and her doctors went to court is because they had absolutely no way of knowing if their judgment about the medically-necessary character of this abortion would be respected by the state of Texas, and if they guessed wrong, they were facing serious criminal penalties. So they needed a judge to confirm they were in the statutory safe harbor. The Texas Supreme Court's response was to say "try it and see" -- knowing full well that the entire problem is that doctors will be too terrified to try with the Sword of Damocles hanging over their head. In those circumstances, of course doctors will be hesitant to move until the case for a health-exception is rock-solid, not from their own "judgment", but in terms of whatever firebrand yahoo anti-women extremist is gazing over their shoulders from the Attorney General's office. And that's going to mean wanting to wait until one has formal judicial approval; or wait until the patient is bleeding out on the table. The promises are lies, and they are meant to be lies. The reality is exactly as ghoulish and inhuman in its cavalier indifference to women's life and health as it has always been presented, and that's fully intentional.

There is one little bit of the Court's opinion I will defend. At the outset, the Court characterizes the Texas laws at issue, which effectively ban abortion in all cases and in this case effectively compelled a woman to carry a non-viable, life-threatening pregnancy to term in the face of excruciating agony and serious medical danger, as "reflect[ing] the policy choice that the Legislature has made." That they did. Texas has made a policy choice that women, in their capacity as vessels, have essentially no rights over their bodies even in the face of excruciating pain, unfathomable injury, or devastating risk. There should be no pretending that it was doing anything different; no illusion that outcomes like this are not exactly what Texas hoped would happen when it enacted its law. 

The point of Texas' law was to ensure that women would be placed in mortal peril and then left at the arbitrary mercy of the state to determine whether their lives would be preserved, and to that extent the Texas Supreme Court was doing nothing more here than faithfully enforcing the will of the Texas legislature. The United States Supreme Court has decreed that, after fifty years where women were acknowledged as human, the judiciary must respect that "policy choice". There remain many avenues through which that choice still can be resisted. But the very least, we can accurately name what that choice is: a choice to endanger women and to make it functionally illegal to give them desperately-needed medical care. What Kate Cox went through is what local and national Republicans hope and demand women around the country should be subjected to, over and over and over again.

Opposing Antisemitism is Hard When You Just Assume It's a Political Stunt

The Republican Party of Texas just voted down a resolution that would have barred the state GOP from associating with persons "known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial."

The internet is having a field day over this, and understandably so. Meanwhile, one of the resolution's proponents is baffled:

“I just don’t understand how people who routinely refer to others as leftists, liberals, communists, socialists and RINOs (‘Republicans in Name Only’) don’t have the discernment to define what a Nazi is,” committee member Morgan Cisneros Graham told the Tribune after the vote.

Far from raising a question, Graham has in fact answered it. The litany listed here -- "leftists, liberals, communists, socialists, RINOs" -- none of these are, in their "routine" use by Republican officials, terms that are actually meant to carry some sort of principled semantic meaning. They're slurs -- bits of rhetorical seasoning, nothing more. And it's no surprise that Republicans treat antisemitism and Nazism, like all other "-isms", in the same fashion -- as a contentless slur one opportunistically hurls at political opponents. They have genuinely drunk their own kool-aid on this. They really don't think that, when people talk about antisemitism or neo-Nazis, they might be referring to something real and objective in the world. Of course it's meaningless theater. 

And if one believes that, then it absolutely makes sense why one would be worried about vagueness and unclear boundaries. The article observes that some committee members "questioned how their colleagues could find words like 'antisemitism' too vague, despite frequently lobbing it and other terms at their political opponents." Again, this bafflement disappears once one realizes that for these Republicans, the vagueness and lack of definition is a service, not a barrier, to the frequent lobbing -- it is because they studiously avoid thinking that antisemitism means anything that they can toss it out to attack everything.

This is why one can never trust Republicans to tackle antisemitism. I mean yes, for the obvious reason that they can't even reliably disavow Nazis. But also for the slightly less obvious but still important reason that their entire orientation towards "antisemitism" is that it is nothing more than a gambit in a political game.* They don't take it seriously as an actual, extant phenomenon, and so they'll never be able to respond to it as one.

* Somewhere -- I can't find it -- I remarked on how Republicans, shortly after Ilhan Omar's "Benjamins" controversy, tried to gin up another controversy over Omar aggressively questioning conservative foreign policy maven Elliott Abrams. There was transparently nothing there on the Abrams thing, but many conservatives seemed baffled that their antisemitism claims weren't getting traction after so much attention was paid to the "Benjamins" tweet. What was the difference? The possibility that the difference could be explained by actual substance -- the "Benjamins" tweet was plausibly antisemitic, the Abrams questioning was not -- truly, genuinely didn't seem to occur to them.

.... And Getting Worse Roundup

This will not be my cheeriest roundup. But there are a bunch of links burning a hole in my pocket, so here you go.

* * * *

Apropos yesterday's post on Fugitive Uterus Laws, a Washington Post article on similar efforts underway to set up checkpoint towns in Texas designed to capture any pregnant women who has designs on leaving the state for freedom.

North Carolina Republicans considering impeaching a state supreme court justice because she talked about racism. While I can't fault Slate for juxtaposing this against the undisclosed largesse heaped upon Justice Thomas, my mind more rapidly went to efforts in Wisconsin to impeach a state supreme court justice because she might vote for democracy.

A politically engaged fifteen year old kid asked a (not even that tough!) question that made Ron DeSantis uncomfortable on the campaign trail. So he sent his goons to rough him up.

You see, the real problem with the "War on Drugs" is that it's too metaphorical.

The latest Fifth Circuit crack-pottery: it's probably illegal for the FDA to tell humans they're not horses (yes, this is the latest conservative institution to burn its remaining dignity in defense of ivermectin conspiracies).

Georgia school district: saying the word "gay" around fifth graders is like graphically describing the horrors of the Holocaust to kindergarteners. 

F-ing Banned Roundup

 Ron DeSantis' botched campaign rollout includes the following hats.

What happened to the letter "F"? I have to assume that some parent filled out a form calling it obscene, and now it's banned in the state of, er, "Lorida".

Anyway, my browser needs clearing, so today you get a roundup.

* * *

Texas Republicans set up a bespoke center at the University of Texas to promote a conservative ideological vision. Texas Republicans also look set to wreck tenure. Turns out the latter poses a recruitment problem for the former.

The Fourth Circuit upholds race-neutral admissions standards at Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia against a challenge that they discriminate against Asian-American applicants. Ilya Somin objects here; I may have my own comments later.

Now that he's running, JTA runs down all the Jewish things you need to know about Ron DeSantis. He loves Israel. Also, his campaign against wokeness has resulted in banning books on the Holocaust, and neo-Nazis are flocking to the state.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) admits she "struggles" with the idea of removing Israeli settlers from the West Bank, suggests they have the right to stay where they are. I've said it before and I'll say it again; one need not like or even fully credit Tlaib's putative commitment to "one state with equal rights for all" to admit that it's clearly better than the many, many politicians whose position is "one state that does not even pretend to provide equal rights for all."

Louisiana Republicans are completely uninterested in hearing from the child rape victims whom they want to force to give birth.

Texas forces a woman with an unviable pregnancy to stay in the hospital until she gives birth to her stillborn fetus (or becomes sick enough to potentially die) by threatening her with criminal prosecution if she tries to leave.

If we don't raise the debt ceiling, it seems we have to triage who gets paid. I've seen many proposals on how to do this. But Kevin Drum raises the possibility that our treasury system isn't built to allow for any "choosing", and so we'd be forced to basically just arbitrarily pay whoever comes to the door first.

In Shocking Twist, Republicans Consider Expelling Legislator For Actual Misconduct

We're all by now familiar with the scandals in Tennessee and Montana, where Republican-controlled legislatures sought to expel or otherwise silence Democratic colleagues for the crimes of having opinions while Black and trans (respectively). Now there's news of another proposed expulsion coming from a red state -- but in a shocking twist, Republicans are experimenting with using it to address actual misconduct!

A House committee has recommended the expulsion of Republican state Rep. Bryan Slaton after finding he had engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with an aide, then acted to thwart an investigation into the matter.

A scathing report by the House General Investigating Committee, distributed to House shortly after noon Saturday, found Slaton did not dispute allegations that he had sex with the 19-year-old woman and provided alcohol to her, nor did he express regret or remorse for his conduct. Instead, the report said, Slaton’s lawyer argued the complaints should be dismissed because the behavior occurred in Slaton’s Austin residence, not the workplace.

That summary barely scratches the surface -- the report strongly suggests that Rep. Slaton raped his aide (the aide was reportedly sufficiently intoxicated that she "could not effectively consent to intercourse and could not indicate whether [Slaton’s conduct] was welcome or unwelcome" -- the word for that is rape) and then threatened her (showing her a message reading "nothing would happen as long as her and her friends keep quiet").

Rep. Slaton entered office after ousting a more moderate Republican with backing from a pair of far-right petro billionaires. And what was his signature issue? You'll absolutely guess:

Last year, he called for a blanket ban on minors at drag shows, saying it was necessary to protect children from “perverted adults.”

Of course.

Anyway, kudos to Texas Republicans for considering using expulsion as a tool to punish actual misconduct as opposed to as a political stunt to disenfranchise minorities.

Why Does DEI Make Good Free Speech Advocates Go Bad?

Keith Whittington, Princeton professor and chief of the Academic Freedom Alliance, has been reviewing various state-level attacks on academic freedom. Today he visits Texas, which has a trio of bills under consideration that all put public universities under their sights in various ways. Whittington is generally skeptical of all these proposals, but he does have kind things to say about portions of one of the proposed laws, SB17.

That bill would shift greater authority to the university boards of trustees, would prohibit the use of diversity statements in faculty hiring, and would abolish the activities of diversity, equity and inclusion administrators. A similar prohibition was adopted as an appropriation rider in the House. Violating the DEI ban can be a cause for terminating even tenured members of the faculty. The bill would also require state universities to adopt as part of their mission statements a set of pledges regarding intellectual freedom, including a commitment to "viewpoint diversity" and "institutional neutrality."

[...]

From my perspective, the DEI ban and the institutional commitments are all to the good in enhancing the intellectual freedom on college campuses. The potential penalty for faculty who violate the DEI ban is worrisome, however, in both its chilling effect and its unjustified expansion of the bases upon which tenured professors can be terminated.

(Whittington also raises the alarm about shifting review power to the boards of trustees).

I want to flag Whittington's claim that the DEI ban is "all to the good" (even if, perhaps, too draconian in its enforcement mechanisms). It is not all to the good! It is very bad, and pointedly, it's very bad for reasons that Whittington identifies elsewhere in his post! This is yet another example of how the anti-DEI obsession amongst some "free speech" advocates has caused them to endorse policies and practices whose impingement on academic freedom would otherwise be nakedly obvious.

Among the things prohibited by this part of SB17, universities would be prohibited from soliciting or acting on any statement regarding an applicants "views on, experience with, or past or planned contributions to efforts involving diversity, equity, and inclusion, marginalized groups, antiracism, social justice, or views on or experience with race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or other immutable characteristics."

As a constitutional law professor whose work focuses significantly on questions of race, equity, inclusion, and so on, I shudder to think how an interview with me would go if the hiring committee were forbidden from asking about or considering my views on these topics. What, exactly, would we talk about -- the Dodgers? And while for someone in my shoes there is an obvious relationship between the banned topics and my disciplinary work, there are also areas where this is germane for professors of any academic affiliation -- most notably, in discussions of pedagogy. As I've written before, it cannot be the case that university actors are forbidden from caring about questions like "will the job candidate do a good job creating an equitable and inclusive environment for our diverse academic community?" But SB17 strongly suggests that such concerns would, in fact, be legally proscribed.*

This is why I've written before regarding how anti-DEI bans are inevitably academic freedom trainwrecks. They're justified as checks against "compelled speech", but in practice they serve (and intentionally so) as massive chills on important facets of academic conversation. And the thing is, Whittington is well aware of the mechanics here -- he explains them ably in his critique of the companion SB16 bill. SB16 purports to forbid professors from "compel[ling] or attempt[ing] to compel" an enrolled student "to adopt a belief that any race, sex, or ethnicity or social, political, or religious belief is inherently superior to any other race, sex, ethnicity, or belief." Here's what Whittington says to that proposal:

It would likely chill classroom speech as faculty try to avoid any appearance of compelling belief on various sensitive topics routinely discussed in college classrooms. To the extent that the law simply codifies the constitutional prohibition on compelled speech, then it accomplishes little other than attempting to chill speech. To the extent that it might be interpreted to prohibit professors from advocating certain views in the classroom or requiring students to correctly describe and analyze such views in their coursework, then it will invite controversy. Not hard to imagine students complaining that a professor attempted to compel them to believe that, for example capitalism is superior to socialism by assigning them to write an essay with that premise.

Emphasis added, because that's the rub. If it's just an attempt to forbid compelled speech -- someone being forced to swear allegiance to a particular ideological framework -- it's redundant except for its knock-on chilling effect. But of course, the law isn't just about the specific "compelled speech" case -- it is designed to and inevitably will curtail very normal academic conversations.

Yet this exact same problem besets the DEI ban. If it's just about forbidding a requirement that prospective professors genuflect before a graven image of Derrick Bell as part of the application process, then it's unnecessary and only serves to create an additional halo of chilling effect. But SB17's DEI ban doesn't "just" do that; it by its terms stretches to cover any "statement" on matters of diversity, equity, inclusion, race, or other like topics -- topics that a hiring committee regularly and appropriately should be considering. For example, as someone who has served on a hiring committee, I very much want to be able to inquire into whether (to pick a recent example) a candidate openly believes Jews should never be hired again. It is important and good that a person like that not get hired; I absolutely can and should be giving preference to candidates who do not take that sort of view! And more broadly, we can and should be able to consider and debate over whether given candidates will do a good a job facilitating an effective academic and pedagogical environment for diverse communities. That's normal, and that's salutary, and that would likely be either forbidden or at least significantly chilled by application of Texas' proposed DEI ban.

Again, the logic for why the DEI ban is problematic is contained in Whittington's own post. He should be able to spot it, and yet it says that the provision (absent the penalty provisions) is "all to the good." FIRE went through the same thing a few weeks ago, drafting a trainwreck proposal against DEI statements that -- were it on any other topic -- FIRE would be screaming bloody murder about the obvious academic freedom impingements. Something about the DEI issue is corrupting free speech advocates, causing them endorse obvious violations and ignore flagrant threats. They're going to need to address this blindspot sooner rather than later, because this fever doesn't seem to be going away.

* SB17 has a provision that exempts requests for information regarding "pedagogical approaches or experience with students with learning disabilities." That narrow and highly specific carveout strongly suggests that inquiring generally how a prospective professor would seek to facilitate an effective and inclusive classroom environment for students of diverse backgrounds would now be verboten.

You Can't Message Your Way Out of Your Own Heartfelt Extremism

Following their preferred candidate getting absolutely blitzed in a swing-state judicial election due to his anti-abortion extremism, conservatives are now trying to argue that they need to pivot to better messaging on abortion. 

There are a whole host of reasons why this won't work, starting with the fact that their favored "moderate", "compromise", "good message" alternative is Lindsey Graham's proposed nationwide compulsory women-maiming law. But another reason why it won't work is that the Republican Party cannot control the behavior of its own membership -- most notably, those in the GOP's YOLO Joker caucus (federal judiciary division) -- who insist on nothing short of the absolute most draconian limits on reproductive care imaginable:

A federal judge in Texas blocked U.S. government approval of a key abortion medication Friday, siding with abortion foes in an unprecedented lawsuit and potentially upending nationwide access to the pill widely used to terminate pregnancies.

The highly anticipated ruling puts on hold the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a medication first cleared for use in the United States in 2000. The ruling will not go into effect for seven days to give the government time to appeal.

U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a nominee of President Donald Trump with long-held antiabortion views, agreed with the conservative groups seeking to reverse the FDA’s approval of mifepristone as safe and effective, including in states where abortion rights are protected.

On the one hand, Republicans need to find a way out of the abortion trap. On the other hand, unaccountable hack judges in Texas are banning abortion medication nationwide based on completely spurious, results-oriented reasoning, guaranteeing that the GOP's forced labor agenda stays front and center in all of its extreme, uncompromising splendor indefinitely.

The Texas injunction now is paired with a dueling injunction from a district court in Washington, which forbids any alteration by the FDA to the status quo (at least in the plaintiff states in that litigation; the judge declined to make his injunction nationwide). This means the case almost certainly is headed to the Supreme Court sooner rather than later. Will the Court actually follow the law for once, or will we get another (to borrow from Josh Blackman) "epicycle" as rule of law bends itself to satisfy the whims of anti-abortion extremists cloaked in Article III garb? Stay tuned.

Are States Allowed to Murder Pregnant Women? Views Differ!

One of the Biden Administration's responses to the Dobbs decision was to issue an interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) that basically says doctors have to provide necessary medical care to pregnant persons in emergency situations -- including abortion care, if that is necessary to protect the mother's life or health. Since EMTALA is a federal law, it would preempt state laws which purport to prohibit abortion care in those circumstances.

Consequently, various red states have sued to vindicate their sovereign entitlement to require by law that hospitalized pregnant patients be left to die even when their life could easily be saved by surgical intervention. Two courts, one in Texas and the other in Idaho, have now opined on the Biden executive order. They've split in their decision -- the former striking down the new guidance, the latter upholding it and preempting Idaho law to the extent it conflicts with the guidance.

The belief that Dobbs would remove the judiciary from the thicket of deciding abortion cases was always a mirage (if it was believed at all). It just changes what courts will have to decide. Right now, they're deciding whether states are allowed to require, under pain of criminal penalty, that pregnant women and girls be maimed or killed when their bodies and lives could be easily saved. And as we're seeing, on that novel legal question, "views differ". Such is the burden of having a uterus in the post-Dobbs world.

Why Is Democratic Support Amongst Latinos Crumbling?

Republican Mayra Flores won a special election for a heavily Latino Texas House seat on Tuesday, turning a historically blue seat red for the first time in over a century. While redistricting means that the seat will likely elect a Democrat in the fall, Flores' victory is the apex of a trend where Democratic performance has crumbled in the historically-blue Rio Grande Valley.

What is causing this trend? I'll dispense with one no doubt popular hot take -- the whole "Latinx" thing. No, it's not popular amongst the broader Latino community. But also, no, it's almost certainly not driving a major vote shift given how few Latino Americans have even heard of the term.

That said, something is clearly in the air. It seems evident that many Democrats just assumed that Trumpist rabble-rousing about immigration would permanently turn off the Latino community and send them (further) into the arms of the Democratic Party. That maybe led to some coasting, which is now coming back to bite Team Blue. But that still doesn't offer a positive explanation about what issue areas are driving the Latino vote today -- especially when it seems that the Republican Party's political extremism, and ties to White nationalism, is growing more pronounced.

Of course, one can fairly observe that "the Latino vote" is an amalgamation of several different political collectives who hardly share identical interests or perspectives. Mexican-Americans in the Rio Grande Valley have many differences from Puerto Rican voters in New York or Cuban-Americans in Miami. But even if we cast a more focused lens, concentrating on places like the Rio Grande Valley, I think the puzzle remains (and I'd also ask whether there is, right now, a substantial subsector of the Latino population which is currently moving in a more Democratic direction? If not, then it seems there is a problem here that is occurring across cohorts).

Likewise, it has long been known that many Latino Americans are socially more conservative than the median American Democrat. But that's always been true, raising a "why now" question. Is this a backlash against (perceived or real) excesses amongst progressives in socially liberal policy? I know everyone likes to blame "the Squad" for everything, and I think that's a temptation to be resisted, but at least it's a hypothesis that needs to be explored. Nonetheless, I doubt that's the only valid explanation on offer, and I'm interested in hearing others.

The (Non-)Prevalence Problem of CRT

Years ago, I remember reading a famous paradox concerning how Americans viewed the subject of foreign aid. If you asked them "should the US spend more or less on foreign aid," most Americans would answer "less" -- they thought we spent way too much money on the issue. But when you asked them to estimate how much the United States spent on foreign aid each year, they gave an answer that was an order of magnitude higher than what we actually spent. And worst of all, if you asked them how much they thought we should spend on foreign aid, their answer was still far higher than what we actually did spend -- and remember, this is from people who thought their position was that we needed to cut foreign aid!

At one level, this confluence mostly just shows that most people are innumerate. But taking it somewhat at face value, there is a nettlesome political puzzle here. What does one do if people say they want to adopt position X, but actually advocate for moving away from X, because they are under the misapprehension that the status quo is on the far side of X and thus believe that moving away from X actually means moving towards it?

This is a problem with some folks who've joined up on the "anti-Critical Race Theory" crusade. Of course, there are plenty of people who make no bones about their position -- they think CRT is a Globalist Marxist Socialist Communist Soros Triple Parenthesis plot, and they want to destroy it. But others at least purport to believe that Critical Race Theory should be taught, it just shouldn't be the only thing that is taught. For instance, David Bernstein of the "Jewish Institute for Liberal Values", a prominent anti-CRT voice in the Jewish community, took the position that any school which teaches a "traditional" narrative about civil rights should also teach a CRT perspective.

I absolutely believe any school that teaches a traditional narrative should teach a CRT based approach as well. I don’t know if there are more schools in the traditional category.

— David Bernstein (@DavidLBernstein) January 30, 2022

Now here's the thing. If your opinion is that every school should teach both a "traditional" and "CRT" style approach to civil rights, you are advocating for a position that is way to the left of the status quo. The vast majority of primary and secondary schools in the United States do not teach "CRT" at all. In some small number, you might get a CRT-influenced approach in conjunction with more traditional accounts. The number of students who are only being exposed to CRT, and no other perspective, is absolutely negligible. Objectively speaking, if your view is "students should hear both traditional and CRT views", you should be pushing for far more inclusion of CRT into public school curricula than is present in the status quo.

In other words, the entirety of the barrier to getting to the world Bernstein claims he wants to see comes from folks like the Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, who's trying to get the University of Wisconsin to rescind its hiring of respected scholar Jennifer Mnookin as Dean because Mnookin (this is a direct quote) "supports critical race theory being taught on campus". It's Texas passing laws limiting what can be taught in the classroom with the express goal of seeking to "abolish" CRT. It's Florida with a veritable cavalcade of legislation seeking to target and suppress "woke" ideologies.

Yet Bernstein, like the ill-informed respondent on foreign aid, has adopted a politics that sprints off in the exact opposite direction from where he claims he wants to go, because he has a wildly off-base assessment of how common Critical Race Theory is. He thinks CRT is everywhere, so getting to a position of even-handedness means pushing back against CRT's hegemony, even if it means making common cause with some unsavory actors. The reality is that CRT is still relatively obscure for most Americans, and so getting to evenhandedness would mean a more aggressive deployment of CRT into the American educational curriculum than would be dreamed by even the philosophy's most fervent supporters. 

Is he actually that ignorant about the true (non-)prevalence of CRT in the American educational system? I think he probably isn't; but there is something to be said for a certain type of elite who forgets the world exists more than 10 miles beyond Brooklyn and so confuses what is commonplace in a Williamsburg coffeeshop with the national status quo. A little of column B, a little (a lot) of column B, I'd wager. 

Scattered Thoughts on the Colleyville Hostage Incident

Like most Jews, I imagine, I'm still in a semi-state of shock about what happened in Colleyville, Texas yesterday. Part of that shock is precisely because I am not shocked. Things such as this happening -- well, it's not constantly in the forefront of my mind, but it's never far from the background either. The most important feeling is gratitude that all of the hostages emerged without injury, and gratitude to all of those who worked feverishly to bring about that outcome.

Beyond that, my thoughts are more ... scattered. On a personal level, my wife and I have just started house-hunting, and one element we're considering is whether we want to live in a "Jewish neighborhood". Portland is like many medium-to-large American cities that are not New York, Washington, or Los Angeles, in that there is certainly a well-established Jewish community here, but not a particularly large one. In effect, that means "a Jewish neighborhood" is really "the Jewish neighborhood" -- Hillsdale. There are Jews elsewhere in the city and suburbs, of course, but Hillsdale seems like the only area which is notably Jewish in the way that I grew up in Bethesda (think of the role St. Louis Park plays in the Twin Cities).

Of course, Colleyville, Texas isn't exactly what springs to mind as a Jewish hub either. Which gives a bit of gallows-humor silver lining to the week's events -- while there are advantages and disadvantages to living in a heavily Jewish area, Colleyville underscores that antisemitic terrorism can happen anywhere, so as a factor to consider in where I should plant roots it's pretty much a wash. What a reassuring thought.

On a more socio-political level, well, first things first -- I'll repeat what I said after the attack on a synagogue by a White supremacist in Germany in 2019 (and it disgusts me that I can appeal to precedent on this subject): if our response to White supremacist violence against Jews is not to call for expulsion of White people, or shutdown of White immigration, or restrictions on White civil rights, then the same holds true for Muslims. Ultimately, the key battle line that divided this terrorist from his victims was not Muslim versus Jew, or East versus West. It was between those who are willing to terrorize innocents and destroy families for ideological gain, and those whose politics are about safeguarding families and caring for their neighborhoods. And in that battle, anyone who uses this horror to stir up Islamophobia or any other form of hatred is fundamentally on the side of the terrorist.

Also in the realm of the obvious: it was already a disgrace that Deborah Lipstadt hadn't sailed through confirmation to occupy the role of antisemitism envoy, and I do not want to hear a word about "opposing antisemitism" from any Republican who has blocked her nomination. She should have been confirmed yesterday, and barring that she absolutely must be confirmed tomorrow.

Other things:

• This was an antisemitic attack, and I am flabbergasted that some people are trying to describe it in any other terms. Yes, it appears true that the attacker's immediate political motive was not something as direct as "I hate Jews" -- it was to secure the release of Aafia Siddiqui from prison. But anyone whose understanding of antisemitism is limited to that narrow horizon needs to wake up. The attacker did not choose a synagogue by throwing darts; he chose it because he believed the fundamentally antisemitic conspiracy theory that "the Jews" were in a position to control American policy with respect to the war on terror (it must be said that this sort of antisemitism is something that he appears to share with Dr. Siddiqui). And, conspiracy theory aside, the conscious decision to target Jews in their house of worship for whatever purpose evinces a conscious disregard for Jewish humanity and equal standing that could and should only be characterized as antisemitism.
• Already, we have seen in some quarters of the Jewish world disdain or even hatred directed at this congregation and this Rabbi because they are Reform Jews with avowedly liberal politics. This is not the first time these murmurs have been overheard, and with each passing year they grow louder. It is not something we can ignore for much longer, and it links up to other ways in which liberal Jews are constantly treated as second-class citizens within the Jewish world (whether at the Western Wall or in organizations like the Conference).
• Likewise, there is a direct line between the rhetoric presenting synagogues as the "enemy" who must not be "collaborated" with, and incidents like these. The former is not excusable political hyperbole, it is not an opportunity to engage in elaborate theoretical justifications and hem-hawing. It has stakes, and it has consequences, and incidents like this are among those consequences. I saw many people lauding the Rabbi of this synagogue for his strong commitment to interfaith work, a commitment which showcases the strength of solidarity and communal bonds. And they are right to do so -- but that work and that solidarity and those bonds of kinship are exactly what some people are trying to eliminate under the guise of anti-normalization.
• The Rabbi of this congregation was direct in giving credit to prior outreach and training with local law enforcement and groups like the ADL, which gave him and his congregation the tools they needed to survive this incident. These connections and these trainings keep Jews alive. It is one thing to envision other mechanisms for keeping Jews safe. It is quite another to act as if the only reason Jews have these connections and trainings is because we are eager comrades of the carceral state, and to point to these linkages as proof of our "complicity" in evil.
• The media is terrible at talking about antisemitism, because it doesn't know much about antisemitism. In fairness, this is not something unique to either the media or the subject of antisemitism -- most people don't know much about most things. But there is a tendency by many to believe that of course antisemitism is understood and covered fairly and comprehensively, and it isn't true -- a fact that is a commonality, not a divergence, from the travails endured by other communities facing other issues.

Ultimately, each time an incident like this happens it should confirm that dangerous antisemitism is a real thing and a real threat. That sounds like it should be obvious, but I don't think it is -- too much of our national conversation about Jews and about antisemitism treats it as an opportunity to take political cheap shots by poking at a source of trauma that is fundamentally viewed as a joke. I've seen too many cases where "antisemitism" -- and this includes people who purport to be fighting it as well as people who are downplaying it -- is treated as an opportunity for trolling more than anything else, because the participants don't actually think "antisemitism" carries any stakes. Will any Jews really be hurt, if we use a synagogue's ties to the ADL call for boycott; will any really be hurt, if we exploit a violent assault to pretend as if Jews are calling for a ban on Muslim immigration; will any really be hurt, if we keep the antisemitism envoy position vacant for a little while longer while we grandstand for the base? Either those who act this way think the answer is no, or they don't care that the answer is yes. Both options are disgraceful, and reflect the core disease that permeates every discussion we have as a country about antisemitism and Jewish safety.

I wish I could say things will be different this time. But I would put money down on nothing changing one bit.

UPDATE: One other thing I forgot to mention. The primary effects of terrorism on its victims are bad enough. But a secondary effect -- and often a secondary objective -- is to convert the openness of societies and institutions into vulnerabilities. Just as Dylann Roof was invited into the church he'd eventually massacre because they thought he wanted to participate in the Bible study, the attacker at this synagogue was invited inside because they thought he was a homeless man and wished to provide him shelter. It is tempting -- and a perfectly understandable temptation -- to respond to that exploitation by closing one's doors. But ultimately, that is a choice that gives the terrorists a posthumous victory, and we should do everything in our power to avoid that terrible outcome. I don't pretend that the choices between security and welcoming are easy or straightforward, but a Jewish community which does not remain open to member, neighbor and stranger is a Jewish community that is no longer recognizably Jewish.

Justifying the Holocaust is a Small Price to Pay for Abolishing CRT

You've probably seen by now the story about a Texas school administrator suggesting to teachers that, in the wake of recent supposedly "anti-Critical Race Theory" rules demanding that teachers provide "both sides" of contentious or controversial topics and not in any way proffer sweeping denunciations of anyone or anything as "systematically" racist, they must provided a "balanced" account of the Holocaust. To be clear, it seems apparent that the administrator is not happy about this, but rather viewed this as the inevitable consequence of following the rules that have been laid down (and she indicated that there may have, in fact, been parental complaints before about the Holocaust being taught in an "imbalanced" fashion).

The small but vocal Jewish contingent which has been pushing the anti-CRT hysteria, suddenly aware of the leopards hungrily eyeing their own faces, was thrust on the defensive. Do they have regrets about the obvious and inevitable consequences of their own actions? No. And incredibly, they seem willing to allow for renewed debate over the very morality of the Holocaust if that's what it takes to oppose critical race theory:

“The dispute about the interpretation of events is completely legitimate, but the dispute about the existence of events is either dangerous or stupid or both,” said Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. “You can, for example, argue endlessly about the effects and causes of slavery but to argue that slavery didn’t happen is idiotic, or pernicious, and the same thing is true with the Holocaust.”

It is not an accident that Rabbi Wolpe, and the other anti-CRT voices quoted in the article, frame their disclaimers as opposing Holocaust denial -- a purely factual stance. Because let's be precise about what Rabbi Wolpe is suggesting here at applied to Holocaust education. He's saying that it's stupid to debate the "existence" of events, whether it's the Holocaust or slavery, but we must be "balanced" as to the dispute over their "interpretation". And perhaps "balance" isn't meant to apply to the raw existence of historical fact. But that means "balance" is applied to matters of normative assessment. The real potential "balance" in the Holocaust context is not denying that it happened, but suggesting that it was justified, or at the very least wasn't as bad or unjustified as "critics" suggest. Making sure we provide "diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective" means we have to dispassionately present the Holocaust from the point of view of the Germans just as much as the Jews.

As with slavery, where the "dissenting" narrative is that slavery's evils were overstated, many masters were kind, most White people were innocent, and in any event none of it has anything to do with the present day, the Holocaust too has alternative perspectives, where unflinching presentation of the Holocaust's horrors now must be "balanced" with narratives emphasizing "good Germans", the "innocent Wehrmacht", legitimate German grievances, and Jewish aggression and exploitation (both before and after the event). We would hate for any White people to feel "demonized", after all.

This was entirely predictable. As much as folks like Wolpe and David Bernstein loudly proclaim to be shocked -- shocked -- by the reach of the formal anti-CRT legislation they purport to "oppose", such legislation is the tangible manifestation of the anti-CRT campaign, which never had anything to do with CRT to begin with. It was always a backlash against teaching unflinching and unblinking history in the context of systemic oppression, dressed up in a sloppy "liberal" appeal to "both-sidesing". Once you do that, of course it's going to apply to the Holocaust too.

The thing is, whether we're talking about the Holocaust or about Jim Crow, I concede it may not always be fun to learn their your "group" or your ancestors were the villains of a particular chapter of history. Nonetheless, the purpose of the educational practice is not to "demonize" any student on basis of their identity, and the ancillary effect of generating feelings of "discomfort" is not something that likely can be avoided without utterly neutering the value of the lesson. The Holocaust is uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable in terms of what it did to Jews, in what it says about the moral fiber and moral foundations of a modern European state, and in what it implies about contemporary politics (about Jews and otherwise). Same with America's history of racial apartheid. It simply is discomforting, in terms of what it has done to people of color, in what it says about our collective national conscience and our foundational creeds, and what it implies about present day injustices and inequities.

Nonetheless, Holocaust education is not and should not be agnostic as between whether the attempted extermination of Jews was good or bad, and is not and should not be studiously indifferent over drawing lessons on how to head off similar atrocities in the future. When Texas demands that agnosticism and that indifference under the patina of both-sidesing, then it is impossible for contemporary Holocaust education to function as it should. But these are indeed the wages of the anti-CRT campaign it has embarked on.

To some extent, then, we can perversely admire the principled decision Wolpe, Bernstein, et al are sticking to here. In their view, raw facts may be sacrosanct, but "interpretations" must always be open. And so, in practice, their view is that while Texas schools should not teach outright Holocaust denial, they can and must be more open to debating the Holocaust's merits -- the German side and the Jewish side, presenting is neutrally and dispassionately as possible. White Supremacists should count themselves lucky to have such tenacious advocates. The rest of the Jewish community will unsurprisingly remain appalled.

Old in Town Roundup

I've arrived in Chicago! I wouldn't characterize myself as "new in town", since I've already lived in Chicago (indeed, in this very building) before. But I am feeling very, very old as I try to unpack various boxes.

Anyway, here's a roundup:

* * *

The Antisemitism Cow finally speaks (beyond just "MOO", that is)!

A pretty big storm is developing at Ole Miss, where a tenure-track professor was summarily fired from his position after criticizing "powerful, racist donors."

Also in academic freedom, albeit garnering less attention: students at the University of Dallas trying to form a racial justice club offering "a welcoming, inclusive community" are encountering stiff resistance from the student government (and some faculty). Opponents claim -- I swear I'm not kidding -- that the club can't be accepted because it would mean conceding that the university might not already be inclusive and welcoming of all students.

Trump issues a new wave of pardons, with special focus on corrupt GOP politicos and American paramilitary operatives implicated in the murder of civilians. Utterly disgraceful.

An interesting and thoughtful interview with incoming Congressman Jamaal Bowman, with special focus on his relationship with the Jewish community (Bowman ousted longtime Rep. Eliot Engel, who is Jewish, in this year's Democratic primary).

Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck, who is also chair of the state party, announces he will refuse to take the COVID vaccine. The GOP has been flirting with anti-vaxx politics for awhile now, but it couldn't have picked a worse time to topple over the edge.

Reluctantly Not Being Evil

In Texas, a federal judge has thrown out an effort by Texas Republicans to invalidate over 100,000 legally cast ballots down via "drive-up" voting procedures in Harris County, ruling that the plaintiffs lacked standing. That's rightfully the headline, and it certainly puts this judge ahead of his colleagues on the 8th Circuit, but buried in the middle of the story we read that -- had he found the plaintiffs had standing -- he would have enjoined any further (i.e., today's) drive-up votes from counting. In other words, he thinks the plaintiff's crackpot theory is correct on the merits, he's just bound by technicalities not to give them what they want.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court today reversed the 5th Circuit's decision that prison guards leaving an inmate in a cell overflowing with his own bodily waste and sewage deserve qualified immunity, concluding this was one of the rare instances where even general statements of law could provide fair notice that the relevant governmental conduct was unconstitutional. This is noteworthy on its own, as the Supreme Court virtually never intercedes to chide lower courts for being too willing to grant qualified immunity, but apparently this case was a bridge too far. Justice Alito concurred in the case -- which, again, puts him ahead of Justice Thomas, who dissented without opinion -- but wrote separately to chastise the Court for even taking the case, deeming it a matter of mere error-correction that was not worthy of the Court's time. Again, Justice Alito seems flatly annoyed that he was placed in a position where he felt compelled to be less of a schmuck than he'd like -- and anyone who voted for to intercede in Dunn v. Ray has permanently lost the ability to complain about the Court being too loose in hearing cases.

Texas Anti-BDS Law Struck Down

This is an extremely methodical and well-reasoned opinion that I suspect will become the touchstone for future courts examining this issue. And not to pat myself on the back too hard, but it pretty much represents a line-by-line validation of my essay laying out the faults in anti-BDS laws and how they might be avoided.

1) The court makes much of the fact that the law applies to sole proprietorships who have no independent existence from their "owner", meaning that the anti-boycott provisions seemingly apply to their personal, individual choices. I suggested that anti-BDS laws should probably exempt sole proprietorships for this reason (Texas is already gearing up to amend the law along these lines, which is likely to moot the proceedings since I don't think any of the plaintiffs are large enough or do enough business with the state to qualify under the new law); 

2) The court notes that the law does not clearly limit itself to forbidding boycott activity that occurs in the course of fulfilling the contractor's work with the state; I suggested that implementing such a limitation would more clearly link the law to the state's interest in managing its contractors' work performance. 

3) While Texas tried to defend its law as a protection against national origin discrimination, the court observed that the law as written is both massively under- and over-inclusive along that score. I suggested that, if a state wants to write a national origin discrimination ban, just do that instead of trying to gerrymander an Israel-only one-off.

So yes, the moral of the story continues to be that these laws are massive own-goals by the pro-Israel movement and they're reaping what they've sown by allowing sloppy, politically-motivated legislation to become the face of the anti-BDS cause and then blow up in their faces. The other moral of the story is to listen my legal analysis.

Fraud Squad! Roundup

In a meeting, I got a phone call from my bank about potentially fraudulent transactions on my credit card. Had I recently ordered $50 worth of fast food pizza? No, I hadn't -- and so the account is frozen, and presumably the charges will be reversed.

An hour later, upon returning to my desk, I had the bizarre joy of seeing a confirmation from Domino's promising me that my "pizza is on the way [to Houston, Texas]!"

Anyway, long story short: I'm getting pizza for dinner tonight.

* * *

Jenny Singer of the Forward interviews Young Gravy, a Black Jewish rapper (and GW student). It's a really interesting and worth your time (I'm saying that not just because I think I played a role in putting the interview together!).

I think I missed this when it came out, but a Texas court struck down the Indian Child Welfare Act's adoption rules this past fall, saying that act's preferences for Indian children to stay with Indian families was racially discriminatory against non-Indians. The Judge, incidentally, was Reed O'Connor -- the same guy who just struck down Obamacare. He's certainly setting himself up as the go-to-guy for tip-of-the-spear conservative judicial activism.

Alabama was all set to execute a Muslim inmate -- but refused to allow a Muslim chaplain to be present with him during the execution (they did offer a Christian chaplain, which unsurprisingly the inmate did not consider to be a satisfactory substitute). 11th Circuit stays the execution due to the "powerful Establishment Clause claim" (and plausible RLUIPA claim). Alabama is appealing to the Supreme Court.

A new poll finds that over half of Israeli Jews agree that the controversial "nation-state" law must be either abandoned outright or fixed to confirm the state's commitment to democratic equality for all citizens.

A Cameroonian official has apologized for threatening an ethnic minority group by comparing them to Jews in pre-WWII Germany, namely: "In Germany, there was a very rich community who wielded all economic power .... They (the Jews) were so arrogant that the German people were frustrated. Then one day, a certain Hitler came to power and put them in the gas chambers."

I have no takeaways from the Likud primaries except celebrating Oren Hazan's imminent departure from the Knesset. Goooood riddance.

Iraqi Jews commemorate family members who were "disappeared" by state secret police.

Three Ways of "Banning" BDS Contractors

I've been a skeptic of state anti-BDS laws. The short version of my view is that (a) such laws, if they are to pass First Amendment muster, must be drafted and implemented very carefully, and (b) such laws will almost certainly neither be drafted nor implemented very carefully, resulting in (c) the regular, expected, and consistent flow of cases which will at the very least be PR disasters.

The latest case comes from Texas, where a speech pathologist lost her job for refusing to sign a stipulation that she does not and would not boycott Israel for the duration of the contract. Texas law requires that state contractors -- including sole proprietorshops -- refrain from boycotting Israel in order to be eligible for state contracts. This requirement was quickly cast on the internet as a "pro-Israel oath" and then an "oath of loyalty", because this is the internet and we can't talk about Jewish things without exaggerating in the most antisemitic way possible.

The sole proprietorship case is obviously the most troublesome, since it seems to prevent individuals-as-individuals from exercising their conscientious right to boycott insofar as they also transact with the state.

But on that score, it struck me that there are two different sorts of ways these laws could be written, with very different constitutional and free speech implications:

1. They could prohibit contracting with entities who boycott Israel "on their own time"; or 

2. They could prohibit contracting with entities who boycott Israel in the course of fulfilling the contract.

The first type of law covers contractors who, just on a day-to-day basis, refuse to buy Israeli products for some presumably ideological (non-business related) reason. The Texas woman, for example, says that she out of personal ideological conviction refuses to buy Israeli products as part of Palestinian solidarity (she is an American citizen of Palestinian descent). That certainly seems to raise very real free speech hackles. It is designed to punish someone for engaging in conduct unrelated to their job because one dislikes the ideological message behind that conduct.

The second type of law only covers and proscribes boycotting Israel in the course of fulfilling the contract. So it would be indifferent to what the Texas woman does or doesn't purchase on her own time, but would tell her that she couldn't -- say -- refuse on ideological grounds to use an Israeli software program that was the best fit for her occupational needs, or decline to serve an Israeli student while serving as a school pathologist. That seems much closer to run-of-the-mill state regulation of its employees' on-the-job conduct, and is much more permissible. The state has a valid interest in ensuring that its contractors-qua-contractors refrain from discrimination and accomplish their tasks in the most efficient manner possible.

There's also a third permutation which David Bernstein alerted me to, which is particularly germane in the sole proprietorship case:

3. The laws could prohibit contracting with entities who boycott Israel in their capacity as a contractor.

The difference between a Type 2 and Type 3 law is that in the former the contractor would be free to boycott Israel in all respects save matters related to the contract; whereas in the latter the contractor would have to refrain from boycotting Israel even in its operations that had nothing to do with the state contract.

The difference between a Type 1 and Type 3 law is a distinction between what our speech pathologist does as a private citizen and what she does as a business. This is one of those seemingly fictitious distinctions that is nonetheless exceedingly important in business law: "you" are not the same as "the business which happens to be solely comprised of 'you'". So: does her speech pathology business boycott Israel (again, return to the "would she work with an Israeli exchange student" question), or is her boycotting something she does as a private actor? Is she not buying Ahava cosmetics for her bathroom, or is she not purchasing Israeli software for her practice? These distinctions are arguably relevant.

Or arguably not: one might say that she has the right to run her "company", as much as her private life, in line with her ideological scruples, and so either way there is a threat to free expression. The circumstances where a company can independently claim to possess ideological, moral, or religious interests are controversial (remember Hobby Lobby?), and I don't want to wade into the morass now.

For me, I think that Type 2 laws might be justifiable (though I'd prefer they simply be worded as general non-discrimination provisions than anything Israel specific). Type 1 laws definitely stretch too far, and Type 3 laws probably do too, at least as applied to solo operations.

But then we return back to the thesis of my article: these laws will almost always be written loosely and interpreted poorly, and those facts will inevitably swamp even any valid gains that they may secure. Better to just have general anti-discrimination laws, and make it clear they'll be enforced.

But Can Hanlon's Razor Explain This?

You know, it wasn't long ago that if you told me the Texas prison system banned Shakespeare but permitted Mein Kampf, I'd have assumed it was due to some form of incompetence. And not, say, a genuine preference on the part of Texas prison administrators for White supremacist and Nazi literature over literary classics.

Now? Less sure.

“‘Mein Kampf’ is on the approved list because it does not violate our rules,” said a prison official.

 Lovely.

How To Turn #IStandWithAhmed Into an Anti-Obama Attack

The big viral story of the day is a Muslim teenager, Ahmed Mohamed, who built a homemade clock, took it to school to show his teachers his engineering prowess, and was promptly arrested for bringing a "bomb". The case smacks of racial profiling and Ahmed's heartbreaking statement vowing "never to take an invention to school again" has really hit home the emotional and practical depths of his treatment. The President has joined the chorus of condemnations and invited Ahmed to the White House., and Kevin Drum wonders if this might be something so obviously outrageous that even Republicans have to follow suit.

Even conservatives can't really defend what happened here. On the other hand, they can hardly agree with Obama, can they? What to do?

Please. This is easy. First of all, the statement of Irving's mayor (previously most-well-known for engaging in hysterical Islamophobia in an attempt to ban religious mediation), or that of the school district, is the perfect conservative response: no direct attacks on Ahmed, but stressing the importance of public safety and reporting suspicious threats, and congratulating authorities on being "vigilant" towards any "threats". It's basically how Republicans react to cases of police brutality when they can't gin up a decades-old theft conviction or an embarrassing Facebook photo mugging for the camera: vague indication that it sucks for the victim, overridden by the importance of trusting and deferring to the authorities.

But honestly, that's still only scratching the surface. The real opportunity comes from that invitation for Ahmed and his clock to come to the White House. Because when he arrives, obviously the Secret Service is going to check his bag, because that's what they do. And then somebody -- my prediction is Breitbart -- will crow about the naked hypocrisy of Obama condemning a local school district from taking the same precautions that his own security detail demands.

That's how you go pro in anti-Obama hackery.

UPDATE: BOOM! I called it:

#IStandWithAhmed Didn't s.o. mail battery-powered socks to VP Gore once? Secret Service saw a bomb and attempted a controlled demolition.

— Richard5832 (@richard5832) September 16, 2015

Sleeping in Fear, Part II

The other day, I noted the abject paranoia of some Texans convinced that a U.S. army exercise in the southwestern United States was a cover for a military takeover leading to the seizure of their guns and their internment in FEMA concentration camps. My snarky comment was that perhaps this fear would give these residents more empathy towards the far more reasonable fears that many people of color have towards the armed governing authorities, which pose a far less speculative threat to their lives and livelihoods.

But I also admit sharing Digby's sentiments, which were to marvel at just how disrespectful this is towards the men and women who serve in our armed forces. This conspiracy-mongering relies, at its root, on the presumption that the young people who volunteer to risk their lives in defense of America will, at the drop of a hat, just elect to destroy their own country as tools of oppression and despotism. That is a statement of contempt, and entirely undeserved contempt, and it really is shocking that prominent politicians from a party that perceives itself as "pro-military" would indulge in such ugly sentiments.